Interzone

New Science Fiction & Fantasy INTERZONE ISSUE 279 OUT NOW!

INTERZONE 272

New subscribers can get this issue free by using "IZ272 FREE" as their Shopper Reference during checkout.

Cover

417h3r105 v5 by 2017 cover artist Dave Senecal

Contents

Fiction

Blessings Erupt by Aliya Whiteleyillustrated by Richard Wagner

She asks me if she should have faith in her ability.

I want to answer her question. I would tell her it has no rules. It works just as well without the prayer, and the singing. But there’s no point; I’ll never be given the opportunity to do it that way and neither will she. The process has become as important as the miracle she can perform.

The Music of Ghosts by Paul Jessupillustrated by Martin Hanford

1 : Generation Alpha

Oh mother, my mother, if only you could see that blue jewel star dimming down below our hunkering space rock. That lost Earth, they say it may be dust someday soon, long before we reach our destination, out on the star shoulder of the Pleiades. You were ash before this world was born, you were ash before the sun grew wane and hungry with light, and you had entropy eating away at your thoughts before we could trap your patterns and keep your memories in the library forever.

Ghosts of a Neon God by T.R. Napper

Cigarette dangling from his lips, Jack Nguyen jimmied the panel at the back of the glimmer bike. Col Charles stood in the shadows at the head of the alley on lookout, softly whistling an aria. The bike was a wide-bellied easy rider belonging to one of the wide-bellied, handlebar-moustached Rebels bikers playing pool in the dive bar backed by the alley.

The Goddess of the Highway by Erica L. Satifkaillustrated by Vincent Sammy

Harper Jones knocks back the better part of his bottle of amphetamines with one hand and presses his other palm on the dashboard display. He looks at the clock.

Sixteen hours, four minutes, seven seconds.

He’s tired and wired all at once. His shoulders ache with the tension brought on by the bennies, and his teeth have worn down to nubs. He can hear them grind even through the soothing tones of the in-cab entertainment system, which is currently broadcasting soft piano paired with roundish blue-green shapes.

Sixteen hours, eight minutes, forty-nine seconds.

Black Static 60 Out Now

Black Static is published at the same time, and in the same format, as Interzone. Issue 60, the tenth anniversary issue contains new dark novellas and novelettes by writers who published their very first stories here: Carole Johnstone, Tim Lees, Ray Cluley, and Stephen Hargadon, with a guest editorial by the legendary Mick Reeks. The cover art is by Ben Baldwin, who also began his career here, as did Lynda E. Rucker who's now in every issue with her Notes From the Borderland column. Other features include Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore; Case Notes by Peter Tennant (book reviews and an in-depth interview with Daniel Mills); Blood Spectrum by Gary Couzens (film reviews). Story illustrations are by Ben Baldwin, Jim Burns, Richard Wagner, and others. To take out a discounted subscription to Black Static, or Black Static + Interzone combined, please visit this website's shop.

Potential subscribers outside the UK should note that six issues of 12-issue subscriptions have absolutely no postage added: you'll pay exactly the same as a UK subscriber.

New subscribers can get this issue free by using "BS60 FREE" as your Shopper's Reference during checkout. The same offer applies to Interzone (use "IZ272 FREE") and a dual subscription to both magazines (use "IZ272 + BS60 FREE").

Interface

EditorialAndy Hedgecock

Brian W. Aldiss: Present Readership Excepted A Personal Recollection

Many years ago I heard Pat Kane conduct a clumsy interview with Brian Aldiss on Radio 4: Kane was treated to a polite but emphatic battering. So when I was asked to interview Aldiss for The Third Alternative in 2003, I was a little nervous. I needn’t have worried: he didn’t suffer fools gladly, including this fool – “nonsense, move on” – but he was generous with his time and profligate with his witty asides, and he went out of his way to offer encouragement. He had a combative attitude to consumerism, corporate greed, religion, literary snobbery and – occasionally – science fiction and its ‘communities’.

Future Interrupted: Use Your AllusionJonathan McCalmont

We live in an age where we are constantly under siege from other people’s recommendations. This makes it useful to know what it is that we actually enjoy. This may seem self-evident but we are seldom as psychologically transparent as we would like to believe and sometimes it takes a bit of time to understand and unpack why we respond to particular works in particular ways.

Time Pieces: Starting from the End: the Anatomy of Post-SFNina Allan

In an article published in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago entitled ‘How post-horror movies are taking over cinema’, film critic Steve Rose decries the safe commercialism of so much horror cinema and examines the emergence of a new counter-trend.

Reviews

Books reviewed include The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts (plus in-depth interview with the author by Jo Lindsay Walton), Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Iain M. Banks by Paul Kincaid, The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross, Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer, Xeelee: Vengeance by Stephen Baxter, A Scruffian Survival Guide by Hal Duncan (plus author interview by Elaine Gallagher), A Man of Shadows by Jeff Noon

Mutant PopcornNick Lowe

Films reviewed include The Dark Tower, War for the Planet of the Apes, Cars 3, Despicable Me 3, The Emoji Movie, Genocidal Organ, Shin Godzilla, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Captain Underpants, A Ghost Story, It Comes at Night, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, The Untamed

How To Buy Interzone

Interzone is available in good shops in the UK and many other countries around the world, including the USA where it is stocked by Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and elsewhere. If your local store (in any country) doesn't stock the magazine they should easily be able to order it for you so please don't hesitate to ask them. You can also buy the magazine from a variety of online retailers, or a version for e-readers from places like Weightless Books, Amazon, Apple, Smashwords, etc.

The best thing though is to follow any of the Shop/Buy Now/Subscribe links on this website and buy this new issue (scroll down to the bottom of the Shop), or better still take out a subscription (at the top of the Shop), direct with us. You'll receive issues much cheaper and much quicker, and the magazine will receive a much higher percentage of the revenue. Magazines like Interzone cannot survive without subscriptions, so thanks for your support.

Potential subscribers outside the UK should note that six issues of 12-issue subscriptions have absolutely no postage added: you'll pay exactly the same as a UK subscriber.

SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers can get this issue free by using "IZ272 FREE" as their Shopper's Reference during checkout.

Please Help Spread the Word

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The Teardrop Method by Simon Avery

Interzone readers will be interested to know that TTA Novella 4, The Teardrop Method by Simon Avery, is out now as a B-Format paperback with wraparound cover art by Richard Wagner and bonus connected short story. You can buy it now from this website's shop.

"The Teardrop Method is a story about stories; a beautiful novella about love and loss and the connections people make and then sometimes break. It's quiet, haunting, and ultimately moving" Gary McMahon

"Nightmare plotting infused with an aching mitteleuropäische sadness, Simon Avery’s tale of music and mortality could be the novelisation of a lost Argento movie" Nicholas Royle

"Without any prep or background, I started reading the novella The Teardrop Method by British author Simon Avery, and was immediately engaged by the moodiness, the bleakness, the desperation and creaky, world-weariness of the setting and characters. These appealing elements perfectly coalesced into a tragic and fervent eulogy to the creative process - to Art with a capital A - as a means of salvation and transcendence and doom, and to love itself in all its complex iterations, exploring the concept of loving, dying, and even killing, in order to achieve the proper reception code from the eternal Muse while the roaring Danube drowns out the rest of the world. This is a very European story, in all its faded baroque finery and cafe claustrophobia. The snow is heavier here, the dawn ever more surprising. The supernatural and the natural are not so far removed in places like this. The old and the new forever caught in a twirling waltz. I highly recommend this novella, and cannot wait to see what melody Mr Avery pens next. I'll be listening" T.E. Grau